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Roots and tubers from Indonesia

MOCAF (modified cassava flour)mocaf

MOCAF is Indonesian cassava flour made by soaking thin cassava chips in water with a lactic acid bacteria starter for half a day to a day and a half, then washing, drying and milling them. The ferment whitens the flour and makes it behave more like wheat flour. Indonesia has a national standard for it, SNI 7622:2011.

Fully documentedRoots and tubers16 h – 45 h

Recipe

Amounts from a sourceAmounts are one study's lab recipe (Sanda et al. 2023); factories scale the same steps.
Cassava, peeled, washed and sliced into chips1 kg[sanda2023]
Water1 L[sanda2023]
Bimo-CF starter (lactic acid bacteria)1 g[sanda2023]
Starterlactic acid bacteria starter (Bimo-CF in one study, a Lactobacillus casei culture in another)

Total time across the recorded steps: 16 h – 45 h

Start
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What changes: Peeled cassava is sliced into chips a few millimetres thick

Step 1 of 5
Peel, wash and slice into thin chips
Time
Not documented
Temperature
Not documented
Salt
None given
Acidity
Not documented
Which microbes the steps name, step by step
Lactic acid bacteria

Output: thin cassava chips.

Flavour
Not documented
Texture
Not documented
Colour
Not documented

Microbes at work in this step

Not documented for this step.

Method

Measured measured in a studySet fixed by a specification or tested recipeReported one source reports itTypical a general value, not sourced for this fermentUnconfirmed not yet checked against a source

At a glance

MOCAF is Indonesian cassava flour made by soaking thin cassava chips in water with a lactic acid bacteria starter for half a day to a day and a half, then washing, drying and milling them. The ferment whitens the flour and makes it behave more like wheat flour. Indonesia has a national standard for it, SNI 7622:2011. Made in 5 steps over 16 h – 45 h. The longest step, soak the chips with the starter, takes 12–40 h (Sanda L.T 2023) and runs at 37 °C (Gunawan S 2021). Lacticaseibacillus casei and Lactiplantibacillus plantarum do most of the fermenting.

Key numbers
Main step12–40 hReported[sanda2023][gunawan2021]Soak the chips with the starter
Temperature37 °CReported[gunawan2021]Soak the chips with the starter
AciditypH 5.7 → 4.73Measured[gunawan2021]Soak the chips with the starter

What makes this one different

Unlike traditional retted cassava, MOCAF uses thin chips, a short soak with an added lactic starter and a wash to remove the sour taste, so the flour comes out white and neutral rather than sour.

Related ferments

Safety

Cyanide is the main hazard in cassava. In one lab run with bitter cassava, a 90-minute water soak before fermentation cut HCN from 202.12 to 73.74 ppm. Fermentation then removed 79.66 % of that by 16 h, 92.12 % by 24 h and 99.97 % by 40 h, when the flour held 0.02 ppm [gunawan2021]. By those figures, 16 h of fermentation still leaves about 15 ppm, above the 10 mg/kg Codex level for edible cassava flour [fsanz-p1002]. The 12, 24 and 36 h soaks on this page were not tested for cyanide, so do not use bitter roots with a short soak.

History and sources

Every number is labelled with how it is known. How this atlas is made

According to a 2015 Mongabay profile, Achmad Subagio of the University of Jember began researching cassava seriously in 2004, after seeing a potato starch plant in the Netherlands. He designed MOCAF as cassava flour that loses the cassava taste through lactic acid bacteria fermentation. His first lab trials took three days, and he later cut the time to 10–15 hours. In 2006 he began building a MOCAF factory in Trenggalek, which stalled; he then set up a plant in Solo. Indonesia later issued the national standard SNI 7622:2011 for the flour.

  1. [fsanz-p1002] FSANZ, Proposal P1002, Hydrocyanic acid in ready-to-eat cassava chips, final report (gives the 10 mg/kg level in the Codex standard for edible cassava flour)gov
  2. [gunawan2021] Gunawan S., Rahmawati N., Larasati R.B., Dwitasari I., Aparamarta H.W., Widjaja T. 2021, Reaction kinetics of lactic acid fermentation from bitter cassava (Manihot glaziovii) starch by Lactobacillus casei, Indonesian Journal of Biotechnology 26(1):7–14paper
  3. [sanda2023] Sanda L.T., Lisnawati A., Pratama A.P., Yamin M. 2023, Studi pembuatan tepung mocaf (modified cassava flour) dengan lama fermentasi yang berbeda, Buletin LOUPE 19(2)paper
  4. [mongabay2015] Fajar J. 2015, Achmad Subagio, Profesor Muda Pejuang Singkong, Mongabay Indonesia, 5 Februaryweb